Monday, September 23, 2013

You do not become the USA's Public Enemy #1 without cojones de hierro. So before we commence this little missive, let us pause for a moment and recall The Rolling Stones' epic 1968 classic "Street Fighting Man" (yes you really should click the youtube link):

Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy.
Cause summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy.
Tell me what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock n roll band
Cause in sleepy London Town
There's just no place for a street fighting man.

Hey! I think the time is right for a violent revolution!
But where I live the game to play is compromise solution!
Well then what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock n roll band
Cause in sleepy London Town
There's no place for a street fighting man.

Hey I said my name is called Disturbance!
I'll shout and scream, I'll kill the king, I'll rail at all his servants!
Well what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock n roll band
Cause in sleepy London Town
There's no place for a street fighting man.

Do the lyrics sound familiar? Just imagine how Mick Jagger felt screaming such revolutionary rhetoric on stage in 1968 at the top of his lungs - see video of his crazy escapades, including police demolishing stage props - while the masses applauded like mad and did... erm, well ... nothing.

Keith Richards reckons Mick went to demonstrations in London and was even charged by the police, but by 1973 Jagger was already faking the lyrics to hide the original message. The song became a staple of Stones tours but the band never committed to the ideology it espoused because... ah well... that's the Capitalist Music Industry, innit?

Fast forward 40 years. The Stones are all millionaires and another poor street-fighting man is taking it to the streets in London Town. And once again the masses are cheering like mad but doing... erm... well, just about nothing.

So this is where I come in. Bear with me...

I totally believe Julian Assange is a "street fighting man" in the best tradition of the genre. As a working class nobody myself, I fully support his efforts to bring transparency to the powerful with WikiLeaks. And this is something most of his Australian supporters can agree on, because as a nation we have a proud anti-authoritarian background.

Furthermore, I think Julian's hardcore street-wise attitude is exactly what the world needs right now, as the Arab Spring, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden revelations attest. But let us not get confused.

Julian Assange launched into the latest Australian elections with a new party that aimed to break the mould, seize the balance of power across three states, and change the face of Australian politics forever. Sadly, it did not succeed. In fact, it was a dismal failure. And that is hardly surprising.

As a politician, Julian Assange makes a great publisher.

Although the Greens (lead by @SenatorLudlam) were Assange's biggest supporters in Australia, he appears to have made a bizarre but conscious decision to oppose them.

Given the WikiLeaks Party's hostility to the Greens, as shown in Senate preferences, plus comments from major players, plus Julian's expressed support for US congressman Ron Paul and Libertarianism in the final weeks of the Australian political campaign, this anti-Greens stance appears to be not just a deliberate tactic but also a personal political viewpoint. So be it.

This is unfortunate, especially for supporters like myself who sympathised with the Greens and committed years of our time and effort to the WikiLeaks Party. But fair enough.

If the WikiLeaks Party is just Julian's political plaything - rather than the democratic game-changer some of us had hoped for - then it's his choice to just piss it all up against the wall out of pure spite. After all, he's the guy in the embassy still facing a lifetime away from deserved liberty. Not me.

Sure, it would have been nice if the WikiLeaks Party had not contrived such a deliciously seductive Constitution, or if the original National Council did not include such wonderfully inspiring people. But what the fuck. We can get over it.

The review was greeted with snorts of derision. The auditing company normally does environmental studies, the auditor is apparently a friend of John Shipton's and also a financial member of the WLP. He admits he had no access to required emails and documents, and did not talk to many involved. He doesn't even mention @akawaca's submission.

And on the same day @akawaca advises that multiple email accounts have been hacked and all emails prior to August 13 have been deleted (a critical WLP meeting was held on August 12).

Surely nobody is taking this ship of fools seriously anymore? And yet they continue to damage the reputation of WikiLeaks, whose support seems stubbornly and inexplicably entrenched. So who knows what about those hacked @akawaca emails? A response from WikiLeaks and WikiLeaksParty is required.

UPDATE 1:Terms of Reference for an Independent Review have now been posted. Some professional auditors who know nothing about WikiLeaks will be paid to produce limited recommendations. Meanwhile, key insiders remain silent. For me, such standard political party operational bullshit is very disappointing (but hardly surprising at this stage). I have cancelled my membership of the WikiLeaks Party.

1.

On Saturday 20th July 2013 I received a phone call from Julian Assange's
father, John Shipton. I was in Rockhampton for the Yeppoon Peace March at the
time, protesting against US military exercises which saw four bombs dropped on
the Great Barrier Reef that same day. John was wondering if I could pick up a
load of printed material on my way back to Brisbane. He explained that “the
WikiLeaks Party printer" was based on the Sunshine Coast. Then he told me
the printer's name:

"James Ashby, you may have heard of him".

It took a moment for the penny to drop, but when it did I was gob-smacked.
Ashby? Seriously? Assuming I might have missed something about the scandalous
#Ashbygate affair, I waited for an opportunity to research the whole story more
closely. But no, there it was: James Ashby,a 33 year old gay staffer who made sexual
abuse allegations against the parliamentary Speaker, Peter Slipper,
in a move which could have brought down the Gillard government. Of course much
more about #Ashbygate
was yet to be revealed (none of it good), but a Federal Court Justice had
already dismissed Ashby's claims as politically motivated. Why the hell was the
WikiLeaks Party associating itself with such a person? If this got out before
the election, I thought, it would be a catastrophe.

In the end I did not pick up the printed material because I was back home
before John contacted me again with Ashby's address. I wondered if I should
discuss my concerns with others in the party, but by then I was already
"out of the loop". @WikiLeaksParty had quietly unfollowed me. My
email address was getting dropped off discussion threads. And of course my
phone and laptop were being targeted, so there was a good chance I could make
things worse by talking about this before the election (such are the Orwellian
constraints under the WikiLeaks Party was forced to operate). So I crossed my
fingers and hoped that John Shipton knew more about the Ashby case than I did.
But I seriously doubted it.

I first met John Shipton when he was contacting National Council members
prior to the formal registration of the WikiLeaks Party. As a long-time vocal
supporter of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, I was honoured to have been invited
to join the Council. But given that the party would soon be under huge public
scrutiny, there was something I needed to explain: I had gone bankrupt a few
years earlier (after the failure of Kevin Rudd's Green Loans scheme, ironically) and I was still not formally discharged, so I was not sure if I
was legally allowed to be on the Council.

John made a quick phone call to
lawyer Kellie Tranter, later the party's NSW candidate, and then told me I
would not be able to join the Council. After years of dedicated support for WikiLeaks, I felt gutted. But I
accepted the decision in the best interests of the party.

"Never mind," smiled John with a sly wink, "we all have a
few skeletons in our closets, don't we?"

John did not seem too unhappy at all about my situation, and I couldn't
help wondering if that had something to do with my friendship with Julian's mum
Christine. It was never going to be easy for the two of them to work together. [removed at request of Christine Assange - Gary]. My
original understanding was that John would help set up the WikiLeaks Party and
then step away from the day to day running of it. It’s a pity this did not
happen.

Months later, as the divisions within the party became more obvious, I
contacted the Australian Electoral Commission myself, and learned that
bankruptcy did NOT in fact prohibit me from being on the National Council (it only made
me ineligible to run as a Candidate in the election, an option which was also discussed).

In retrospect, sharing my financial situation with John Shipton may have
been one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I do not regret it because I did
what I thought was right for the party and the values WikiLeaks represents. But
given the WikiLeaks Party's own subsequent lack of honesty and transparency, my
voluntary personal disclosure seems bitterly ironic.

2.

When the WikiLeaks Party preferences were announced, I was again gob-smacked.

For two years I had been pressuring Australian MPs and Senators to support
Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, and painstakingly documenting their responses at
ozwikiwatch.blogspot.com - the Greens were clearly the only major party doing
anything to help. Why on earth would we slap them in the face? It was madness.

In New South Wales, the White Nationalists from Australia First and the
militant Shooters and Fishers party were preferenced above the Greens. In
Western Australia, Julian Assange's staunchest parliamentary supporter, Greens Senator Scott
Ludlam, was preferenced below his strongest rival, the National Party. Even in
Victoria, the Greens were well down the list behind minor parties. By contrast,
the Greens had preferenced the WikiLeaks Party (WLP) extremely highly in every
state.

I had just spent a week on Twitter trying to suppress rumours that the Greens would be
preferenced well down the WLP list, and now it turned out the rumours were
true. Worse yet, the source of those rumours was a WLP National Council member,
Cassie Findlay, who helped submit the NSW preferences. And after helping me and
others look like fools, Cassie conveniently disappeared off Twitter and ignored
my DMs (thanks for that, Cassie).

The WikiLeaks Party issued a statement blaming an "admin error"
for the preferencing debacle and promising a review AFTER the election. That
was never going to be good enough. Social media was going off. The mainstream
media was all over it. Our biggest detractors were rubbing our noses in it and
there was nothing we could say in reply.

We clearly needed a proper public
response from the party ASAP. But all the WikiLeaks Party insiders were
suddenly - and very strangely - silent. This was not OK.

I spoke with the only National Council members I knew personally, Sam
Castro and Kaz Cochrane. They were both in tears on the phone. I urged them to
be patient and give things time to work out, but they explained that others
were already walking out the door. When Leslie Cannold's resignation prompted a
wave of departures the next day, I started publicly demanding answers from
@WikiLeaksParty on Twitter.

John Shipton rang me three times that day, and three times I refused to
take his call.

I continued demanding answers on Twitter for several days, until it became
absolutely bloody obvious
that the "admin error" in NSW was really no mistake at all (as WA
candidate Gerry Georgatos belatedly admitted, while still defending his foolish decision to preference the Nationals ahead
of the Greens in WA).

The WikiLeaks Party had promised a full inquiry AFTER the election. But
Julian's August 30th appearance on ABC The Drum
suggested that no inquiry would be necessary. Mistakes were made but nobody
would be held accountable, the people who resigned over these errors were
somehow out of order, even if Julian accepted responsibility, and in any case
he agreed pretty much with everything that was done anyway.

Was her serious? Or just trying to bluff his way through?

3.

I write this now because the election is over and it is time for the truth.
I believe WikiLeaks Party can still play a vital role bringing transparency and
justice to governments around the world, but only if it addresses the mistakes
of the past few months, apologizes to disenfranchised staff and supporters, and
commits to less ruthlessly cynical politics in future.

Lessons must be learned. Mistakes must be acknowledged. If we demand
transparency and accountability from others, we must provide it ourselves.

"There were some views that the WikiLeaks Party should be a front for
the Greens but it was never meant to be a front."

I do not know anyone within the party who wanted it to be “a front for the
Greens”. If there is evidence of this, it should be presented. Let’s not just
smear people with innuendo.

For example, a Greens supporter offered to donate
$3,000 to help the WikiLeaks Party field a Queensland candidate, an offer which
I passed on to John Shipton, who rejected it. Perhaps that Greens supporter was
hoping that WikiLeaks Party preferences would help get the Greens candidate
across the line, but that was never my intention. If Julian really thinks such
things then he has either been badly misinformed by party leaders, or he is getting
paranoid with all the pressure he faces daily.

Many of us within the party assumed we would be able to work with the
Greens (and the Pirate Party and others) even if we were in competition with
them for Senate places, because we shared many common goals (see Scott Ludlam’s
work on Internet freedom, for example). We believed the party could still
appeal to people on both the Left and Right side of politics, because as Julian
himself said:

"We are a party of the Senate. We are not a party of Government. We
are a party of accountability and oversight. Our role is independent precisely
because we are not in the government."

In fact it was critically important to stay above that Right-Left divide if
we wanted to maintain our independence and credibility. So how did we become so
internally divided?

I am deeply concerned that the WikiLeaks Party was unnecessarily
politicised, not by Greens supporters, but by people with a hidden right-wing
agenda, including John Shipton, Greg Barns (campaign manager, former Liberal
Party candidate and advisor to former PM John Howard) and Julian Assange
himself.

I assume this was either:

a. An unfortunate consequence of people at the top imposing their personal
politics on the party without concern for due process, other staff or party members;
or

b. A deliberate attempt to differentiate the party from their closest
competition, the Greens, make the party more appealing to right-wing voters,
and embrace a "win at all costs" attitude, whatever the consequences.

It may be both of the above. But it was also incredibly foolish and deeply
disappointing. It not only alienated countless loyal members and supporters, it
has also potentially terminated ongoing political support from the Greens. More
importantly, perhaps, it has damaged the global public perception of Julian
Assange and WikiLeaks.

I suspect there was a deliberate attempt to marginalise people in the party
who were deemed by the leadership to be "left wing Greenies" (myself
included) even though these people were in fact the most dedicated WikiLeaks
supporters in Australia. People like ostracized Social Media manager Sean
Bedlam, who was arrested after multiple sit-in demonstrations at the US Embassy.
How many of the candidates have even helped organise such a demonstration?

I am writing this now because I believe the explanations for what went
wrong need to be public, and because (sadly) I do not trust the WikiLeaks Party
to conduct a proper inquiry on their own. As a supporter who was not privy to
all the inside conversations, I want answers. If I do not get them, I will
cancel my membership.

For example: whose brilliant idea was it to use James Ashby’s services?
What other links exist with major political parties? What really happened with
the NSW preferences? Who came up with the “admin error” explanation? Did Julian
seriously endorse Gerry Georgatos’s decision to preference the Nationals indigenous
candidate David Wirrpanda ahead of Scott Ludlum, or did he just publicly pretend
to understand it as a way to limit the damage?

The Australian election is now over and the damage has been done. On election day, #PirateParty was trending on Twitter and my timeline was full of people voting Pirates or Greens. Many of these people would have been willing to put a "1" next to WikiLeaks Party if not for the preferences debacle. Julian's public embrace of right-wing US politician Ron Paul, in the final weeks of the campaign, did not help either.

The
Australian WikiLeaks Party could have and should have been the model for other
WikiLeaks Parties around the world, including the USA and Britain, where people
desperate for change have been jealously following our progress. It still can
be, if it learns from these mistakes. If not, I am done with it.

4.

How to understand this mess? And why does Julian Assange keep getting into these massive fuckup situations
with people? Personally,
based on my own family’s experiences, I think Julian Assange shows many
symptoms of high functioning Aspergers Syndrome, and I think that might help explain
(but not excuse) what has happened with the WikiLeaks Party.

Like I say, that does not excuse all the
lies and bullshit, and it certainly does not absolve Greg or John or others for
their part in all this. But for me it helps explain why Julian might have been
mislead by them, failed to see whom he should have trusted best, and may still
find it difficult to admit he was wrong about anything.

Of course it was never going to be easy running a political campaign from detention in a foreign embassy on the far side of the world, while under surveillance by history's most extensive spy network, with all major domestic parties and the corporate media actively hostile to your efforts. But we could have and should have done better.

I am willing to acknowledge that many good people did their best under difficult circumstances. I hope we can take something positive from the ruins, and overcome these divisions. But we need to be guided by the core principles of transparency and justice. And that means accountability. Carrying on as if nothing happened is simply unacceptable.

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